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GPO string realism

I just got the Sibelius edition of GPO and am enjoying it thoroughly. One thing that I have noticed is that the solo string samples seem to sound a lot more synthetic when playing faster passages. I'm sure there must be a way to correct that, but I haven't figured it out yet, and would welcome any advice from more experienced users.

Re: GPO string realism

I have problems with this if I try and use the sustained + short strings to play fast passages --it's normally best to use one of the short bow techniques. The problem here is that the volume is less with section strings (and more with solo strings). Trying to layer the two is one possibility but I haven't found an ideal way to do it yet. It's a balancing act --there will be others here who are further down the road!

PS I'm not quite sure exactly what strings are included with your Sibelius edition so there may be things missing as well.

Re: GPO string realism

Originally Posted by dko22

I have problems with this if I try and use the sustained + short strings to play fast passages --it's normally best to use one of the short bow techniques. The problem here is that the volume is less with section strings (and more with solo strings). Trying to layer the two is one possibility but I haven't found an ideal way to do it yet. It's a balancing act --there will be others here who are further down the road!

PS I'm not quite sure exactly what strings are included with your Sibelius edition so there may be things missing as well.

One very pleasant way is to use the up- and downbow samples. (I mean the upbow samples and the downbow samples, not the alternating ones).
Also the sforzando and marcato marks, with and without dots, give a rich variety. I have found that the simple unchanged staccato dot is what I hardly ever use since it is not loud enough and too dry for me.

If nothing else helps I will go indiviually per note way down in the definition dialog of the accentuation itself. Then I will not use cc21 but cc01 here and set the volume individually while controlling the note lengh by the other parameter in the dialog. This happens rarely but it happens.

Re: GPO string realism

Not only do you want to judiciously adjust the Length parameter, but you might want to go under the hood and adjust the length of the notes themselves. Too much overlap between notes on fast passages, despite a good setting for Length, will contribute to passages sounding fake.

Not sure if you're trying to play all of your parts with a single solo violin sound, but if not, you might want to experiment between the different solo violins for individual passages. You might find that the character of one of those other violins lends itself better to fast passages. It's not unusual for me to do this, even between libraries.

For example, on a recent string arrangement, I switched between 2 Garritan violins to create a very convincing sounding single solo violin part. Even our live cellist felt that it sounded convincing.

I also recall loading up two of the same violin sounds, on different channels, with different Length parameters for each. For the faster passages, I simply moved that MIDI region to the other track (with the shorter Length) and it worked very well. This also gave me an easy way to tweak the Length parameter if needed (and it "needed" LOL)!

Sometimes you can get lucky using one patch for everything, but for the utmost in realism, sometimes it takes a bit of extra work and tweaking.